Lifting heavy by day | Saving lives by night | Crafting anytime in between

Summer Nursing Semester – ABSN

Overall, the summer semester has gone by pretty slow. There really has been nothing to crazy to look forward to for my first year of the program. During the fall semester, psych clinical was interesting. Spring, I was looking forward to Pharm but that ended up to be nothing exciting. Patho for the fall and spring was probably the most interesting class for me so far (Berro is an amazing professor!).

This semester consisted of Ethics and 1 online elective course. The elective I took was Historical Nursing, which mainly consisted of discussion posts every 2 weeks. I’ve never been a fan of history hence why I was a science major. But I personally found the class pretty interesting. This may have been because I had nothing to do except actually read and understand the readings. Hah. But on a serious note, I’ve learned so much in that class about the nursing profession and what we have had to endure throughout history. It’s given me an understanding and more respect for my future profession.

Other elective courses that were offered included Genetics (which most students I heard enjoyed) and Holistic Nursing.

I also took another 1 credit Independent Study (IS) course this summer to fill up my class schedule so I could be considered a part-time student. Pretty much I needed the extra financial aid to pay for tuition – which they’d only give me if I am part-time. The IS course is the same one that I took during the spring semester. We were given another case study on a patient and had to answer the questions including a care plan in a 10-15 page paper. I thought this specific case study was a little harder than last semester simply because I hadn’t learned much about the admitting diagnosis is patho so I had to do a lot more research to understand what I was going to write about.

Also, as far as Ethics goes, it should be an easy A for you! She had quite a few classes online so that was a nice break from having to go down to the city. Especially since it was summer time.

Overall, the summer semester is nothing to get stressed out over. It went by pretty quickly and I had plenty of time to focus on things outside of school all summer! The best part – I got a 4.0 so that bumped my overall gpa up a few points. Which will be a nice buffer for these next coming semesters. Ha!

The sad part of this whole semester was that some of my good friends and study partners that I made this past year are now graduating! A few are going straight into Pace’s FNP program and others will start working soon enough after the NCLEX. I am excited to meet the new incoming class of newbies and maybe I can help some of them out because I wish someone had done that for me!

Personally, I think the program hasn’t been designed well for the 2 year students. The whole 24 month program could probably be shortened to a 18 month program. Some classes could easily be combined during the first year’s semesters. I also think if Foundations was offered to all 1 and 2 year students in their first semester, then us 2 years could take a clinical in the summer to get it out of the way. Also, just in general I felt like I’ve been missing fundamental nursing basics throughout my first year because I won’t learn it until Foundations in my second year. Just some thoughts and opinions I have been thinking!

Classes for the fall semester start on Wednesday. I will be taking Foundations which includes a skills lab for the first half of the semester and my Geri clinical for the second half of the semester (on Thursday). This course also has a lecture portion which will be 3 hours on Wednesdays. The only other course I’ll have is an online EBP. Not completely sure what that will consist of, from what I have heard but not 100% I think it’s group projects and papers.

That concludes my first summer semester. Ill keep you all updated with my next coming semesters.